
^f^i.<.i^^£Z /^^.,„^ >^^^ ^k^ty^n:^^. 



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DELIVERED AT PLYMOUTH, 

DECEMBER 22, 1820. 



THE FIRST 



SETTLEMENT OF NEWENGLAND. 



BY 

lyANIEL, WEBSTER. 



THZIID EDITIOM'. 



BOSTON : 

WBXXS AND LILLY, — COURT-STREET. 

1825. 



DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS, TO WIT: 

District C'krk^s Office. 

BE it lememberMl, that on the twentieth day of December A. D. 1821, in the fortr sixth 
year of the Independence of the United States of America, Wells & Lilly of the said District 
nave deposited in this Office the title of a Book, the Right whereof they claim as Proprietors 
m the Words following, to rvit .— 

"A Discourse, delivered at Plymouth. December 22, 1820. In commemoration of the First 
Settlement of New England. By Daniel Webster." 

In Conformitj to the Act of the Congress of the United States, entitled " An Act for the 
i-ncouragenient of Learning, by securing the copies of Maps. Charts and Books, to the Au- 
tnors and Proprietors of such Copies, during the times therein mentioned :" and also to an Act 
entitled, -An Act supplementary to an Act, entitled. An Act for ihe Ent ourasrement of 
Learning, by securing the Copies ol Maps. Charts, and Books, to the Authors and Proprietors 
ot such Copies during the times therein mentioned : and extending the benefits thereof to the 
Arts ot Designing, Engraving, and Etching Historical and other Prints." 

JNO W. DAVIS, 
Clerk of the District of Massachusetts. 



G4Pr 

ESTATE Of 

VflktIAM C. RIVES 

APHIL, 1940 



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CP 



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Plymouth, Dec. 23, 1820. 

Hon. Daniel Webster, 

SIR, 

At a meeting of the Trustees of the Pilgrim Society, present, 
John fVa[son, William Davis, James Sever, Alden Bradford, Barnabas 
Hf.dge, Thomas Jackson, Jr. and Zabdiel Sampson, Esquires, Voted, 
" That the thanks of the Trustees be presented to the Hoi?. Daniel 
Webster, for his eloquent and interesting Discourse, delivered at 
Plymouth, on the 22d instant, at their request, in commemoration of 
the completion of the second century since the settlement of JVeit' Eng- 
land — that 1)0 be requested to furnish a copy for publication — and that 
the Corresponding Secretary communicate the preceding vote." 

While in the performance of this duty, as honorable as it is pleasing, 
I am directed to subjoin, that the Committee of the Massachusdls His- 
torical Society, and of the American Antiquarian Society, who attended 
on this occasion, by invitation, unite in the request. 

With great esteem and regard, 
I am, Sir, 

Very Respectfully, 

SAMUEL DAVIS, 

Corresponding Secretary of the Pilgrim Society. 



Boston, Dec. 26, 1820. 



SIR, 
I HAVE received yours of the 23cl, communicating the request of the 
Trustees of the Pilgiim Society, and of the Committee of the Historical 
and Antiquarian Societies, that a copy of my Discourse may be furnish- 
ed for the press. I shall cheerfully comply with this request ; but at the 
sanie time I must add, that such is the nature of my other engagements, 
that I hope I may be pardoned if I should be compelled to postpone 
this compliance to a more distant day than 1 could otherwise have 
wished. 

I am, Sir, with true regard, 

Your most obedient Servant, 

DANIEL WEBSTER. 

To Samuf.l Davis, Esq. 
Corresponding Secretary of the Pilgrim Society. 



®ig©®wm^^ 



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Let us rejoice that we behold this day. Let us be 
thankful that we have lived to see the bright and 
happy breaking of the auspicious morn, which com- 
mences the third century of the history of New- 
England. Auspicious indeed ; bringing a happiness 
beyond the common allotment of Providence to men ; 
full of present joy, and gilding with bright beams 
the prospect of futurity, is the dawn, that awakens 
us to the commemoration of the Landing of the 
Pilgrims. 

Living at an epoch which naturally marks the 
progress of the history of our native land, we have 
come hither to celebrate the great event with 
which that history commenced. Forever honoured 
be this, the place of our fathers' refuge ! Forever 
remembered the day which saw them, weary and 
distressed, broken in every thing but spirit, poor in 
all but faith and courage, at last secure from the 
dangers of wintry seas, and impressing this shore 
with the first footsteps of civilized man ! 



It is a noble faculty of our nature which enables 
us to connect our thoughts, our sympathies, and our 
happiness, with what is distant in place or time ; 
and, looking before and after, to hold communion at 
once with our ancestors and our posterity. Human 
and mortal although we are, we are nevertheless 
not mere insulated beings, without relation to the 
past or the future. Neither the point of time, nor 
the spot of earth, in which we physically live, 
bounds our rational and intellectual enjoyments. 
We live in the past by a knowledge of its history ; 
and in the future by hope and anticipation. By 
ascending to an association with our ancestors ; by 
contemplating their example and studying their char- 
acter; by partaking their sentiments, and imbibing 
their spirit ; by accompanying them in their toils, by 
sympathising in their sufferings, and rejoicing in 
their successes and their triumphs, we mingle our 
own existence with theirs, and seem to belong to 
their age. We become their contemporaries, live 
the lives which they lived, endure what they en- 
dured, and partake in the rewards which they en- 
joyed. And in like manner, by running along the 
line of future time, by contemplating the probable 
fortunes of those who are coming after us ; by at- 
tempting something which may promote their hap- 
piness, and leave some not dishonourable memorial 
of ourselves for their regard when we shall sleep 
with the fathers, we protract our own earthly 
being, and seem to crowd whatever is future, as 



well as all that is past, into the narrow compass of 
our earthly existence. As it is not a vain and false, 
but an exalted and religious imagination, which leads 
us to raise our thoughts from the orb, which, amidst 
this universe of worlds, the Creator has given us to 
inhabit, and to send them with something of the 
feeling which nature prompts, and teaches to be 
proper among children of the same Eternal Parent, 
to the contemplation of the myriads of fellow beings, 
with which his goodness has peopled the infinite of 
space ; — so neither is it false or vain to consider 
ourselves as interested and connected with our whole 
race, through all time ; allied to our ancestors ; allied 
to our posterity ; closely compacted on all sides with 
others ; ourselves being but links in the great chain 
of being, which begins with the origin of our race, 
runs onward through its successive generations, bind- 
ing together the past, the present, and the future, 
and terminating at last, with the consummation of 
all things earthly, at the throne of God. 

There may be, and there often is, indeed, a re- 
gard for ancestry, which nourishes only a weak 
pride ; as there is also a care for posterity, which 
only disguises an habitual avarice, or hides the 
workings of a low and grovelling vanity. But there 
is also a moral and philosophical respect for our 
ancestors, which elevates the character and im- 
proves the heart. Next to the sense of religious 
duty and moral feeling, I hardly know what should 
bear with stronger obligation on a liberal and en- 



lightened mind, than a consciousness of alliance with 
excellence which is departed ; and a consciousness, 
too, that in its acts and conduct, and even in its senti- 
ments and thoughts, it may be actively operating on 
the happiness of those who come after it. Poetry 
is found to have few stronger conceptions, by which 
it would affect or overwhelm the mind, than those 
in which it presents the moving and speaking image 
of the departed dead to the senses of the living. 
This belongs to poetry, only because it is congenial 
to our nature. Poetry is, in this respect, but the 
hand-maid of true philosophy and morality ; it deals 
with us as human beings, naturally reverencing those 
whose visible connexion with this state of existence 
is severed, and who may yet exercise we know not 
what sympathy with ourselves ; — and when it car- 
ries us forward, also, and shows us the long continued 
result of all the good we do, in the prosperity of 
those who follow us, till it bears us from ourselves, 
and absorbs us in an intense interest for what shall 
happen to the generations after us, it speaks only in 
the language of our nature, and affects us with 
sentiments which belong to us as human beings. 

Standing in this relation to our ancestors and our 
posterity, we are assembled on this memorable spot, 
to perform the duties, which that relation and the 
present occasion impose upon us. We have come 
to this Rock, to record here our homage for our 
Pilgrim Fathers; our sympathy in their sufferings; 
our gratitude for their labours ; our admiration of 



their virtues ; our veneration for their piety; and 
our attachment to those prijiciples of civil and reli- 
gious liberty, which they encountered the dangers 
of the ocean, the storms of heaven, the violence of 
savages, disease, exile, and famine, to enjoy and to 
establish. — And we would leave here, also, for the 
generations which are rising up rapidly to fill our 
places, some proof, that we have endeavoured to 
transmit the great inheritance unimpaired; that in 
our estimate of public principles, and private virtue ; 
in our veneration of religion and piety ; in our devo- 
tion to civil and religious liberty ; in our regard to 
whatever advances human knowledge, or improves 
human happiness, we are not altogether unworthy 
of our origin. 

There is a local feeling, connected with this occa- 
sion, too strong to be resisted; a sort of genius of the 
place^ which inspires and awes us. We feel that we 
are on the spot, where the first scene of our history 
was laid; where the hei;rths and altars of New-En- 
gland were first placed ; where Christianity, and ci- 
vilization, and letters made their first lodgment, in a 
vast extent of country, covered with a wilderness, 
and peopled by roving barbarians. We are here, 
at the season of the year at which the event took 
place. The imagination irresistibly and rapidly 
draws around us the principal features, and the lead- 
ing characters in the original scene. We cast our 
eyes abroad on the ocean, and we see where the 
little barque, with the interesting group upon its 
2 



10 

deck, made its slow progress to the shore. We 
look around us, and behold the hills and promonto- 
ries, where the anxious eyes of our fathers first saw 
the places of habitation and of rest. We feel the 
cold which benumbed, and listen to the winds which 
pierced them. Beneath us is the Rock, on which 
New-England received the feet of the Pilgrims. 
We seem even to behold them, as they struggle 
with the elements, and, with toilsome efforts gain 
the shore. We listen to the chiefs in council; we 
see the unexampled exhibition of female fortitude 
and resignation ; we hear the whisperings of youth- 
ful impatience, and we see, what a painter of our 
own has also represented by his pencil, chilled and 
shivering childhood, houseless, but for a mother's 
arms, couchless, but for a mother's breast, till our 
own blood almost freezes. The mild dignity of Car- 
ver and of Bradford ; the decisive and soldier-like 
air and manner of Standish ; the devout Brewster; 
the enterprising Allerton ; J^he general firmness and 
thoughtfulness of the whole band; their conscious 
joy for dangers escaped ; their deep solicitude about 
dangers to come ; their trust in heaven; their high 
religious faith, full of confidence and anticipation : — 
all these seem to belong to this place, and to be 
present upon this occasion, to fill us with reverence 
and admiration. 

The settlement of New-England by the colony 
which landed here on the twenty second of Decem- 
ber, sixteen hundred and twenty, although not the 



11 

first European establishment In what now constitutes 
the United States, was yet so peculiar in its causes 
and character, and has been followed, and must still 
be followed, by such consequences, as to give it a 
high claim to lasting commemoration. On these 
causes and consequences, more than on its immedi- 
ately attendant circumstances, its importance as an 
historical event depends. Great actions and striking 
occurrences, having excited a temporary admiration, 
often pass away and are forgotten, because they 
leave no lasting results, affecting the prosperity and 
happiness of communities. Such is frequently the 
fortune of the most brilliant military achievements. 
Of the ten thousand battles which have been fought; 
of all the fields fertilized with carnage ; of the ban- 
ners which have been bathed in blood; of the war- 
riors who have hoped that they had risen from the 
field of conquest to a glory as bright and as durable 
as the stars, how few that continue long to interest 
mankind ! The victory of yesterday is reversed by 
the defeat of to-day ; the star of military glory, ris- 
ing like a meteor, like a meteor has fallen; disgrace 
and disaster hang on the heels of conquest and re- 
nown ; victor and vanquished presently pass away to 
oblivion, and the world goes on in its course, with 
the loss only of so many lives and so much treasure. 

But if this be frequently, or generally, the fortune 
of military achievements, it is not always so. There 
are enterprises, military as well as civil, which some- 
times check the current of events, give a new turn 



12 

to human affairs, and transmit their consequences 
through ages. We see their importance in their re- 
sults, and call them great, because great things fol- 
low. There have been battles which have fixed the 
fate of nations. These come down to us in history 
with a solid and permanent interest, not cieated by a 
display of glittering armour, the rush of adverse bat- 
talions, the sinking and rising of pennons, the flight, 
the pursuit, and the victory ; but by their effect in 
advancing or retarding human knowledge, in over- 
throwing or establishing despotism, in extending or 
destroying human happiness. When the traveller 
pauses on the plain of Marathon, what are the emo- 
tions which most strongly agitate his breast? What 
is that glorious recollection, which thrills through 
his frame, and suffuses his eyes? — Not, I imagine, 
that Grecian skill and Grecian valour were here 
most signally displayed ; but that Greece herself 
was here saved. It is because to this spot, and to the 
event which has rendered it immortal, he refers all 
the succeeding glories of the republic. It is because 
if that day had gone otherwise, Greece had perished. 
It is because he perceives that her philosophers, 
and orators, her poets and painters, her sculptors 
and architects, her governments and free institutions, 
point backward to Marathon, and that their future 
existence seems to have been suspended on the con- 
tingency, whether the Persian or the Grecian ban- 
ner should wave victorious in the beams of that 
day's setting sun. And as his imagination kindles at 



13 

the retrospect, he is transported back to the inter- 
estinff moment, he counts the fearful odds of the con- 
tendino- hosts, his interest for the result overwhelms 
him; he trembles, as if it were still uncertain, and 
seems to doubt, whether he may consider Socrates 
and Plato, Demosthenes, Sophocles and Phidias, as 
secure, yet, to himself and to the world. 

"If we conquer," said the Athenian commander 
on the morning of that decisive day, — " If we con- 
quer, we shall make Athens the greatest city of 
Greece." A prophecy, how well fulfilled ! — " If 
God prosper us," might have been the more appro- 
priate language of our Fathers, when they landed 
upon this Rock, — "if God prosper us, we shall here 
begin a work which shall last for ages ; we shall 
plant here a new society, in the principles of the ful- 
lest liberty, and the purest religion: we shall subdue 
this wilderness which is before us ; we shall fill this 
region of the great continent, which stretches al- 
most from pole to pole, with civilization and chris^ 
tianity ; the temples of the true God shall rise, 
where now ascends the smoke of idolatrous sacrifice; 
fields and gardens, the flowers of summer, and the 
waving and golden harvests of autumn, shall extend 
over a thousand hills, and stretch along a thousand 
vallies, never yet, since the creation, reclaimed to 
the use of civilized man. We shall whiten this coast 
with the canvas of a prosperous commerce ; we shall 
stud the long and winding shore with an hundred 
cities. That which we sow in weakness shall 



14 

be raised in strength. From our sincere but house- 
less worship, there shall spring splendid temples to 
record God's goodness ; from the simplicity of our 
social union, there shall arise wise and politic consti- 
tutions of government, full of the liberty which Ave 
ourselves bring and breathe ; from our zeal for 
learning, institutions shall spring, which shall scatter 
the light of knowledge throughout the land, and, in 
time, paying back where they have borrowed, shall 
contribute their part to the great aggregate of hu- 
man knowledge ; and our descendants, through all 
generations, shall look back to this spot, and to this 
hour, with unabated affection and regard." 

A brief remembrance of the causes which led to 
the settlement of this place ; some account of the 
peculiarities and characteristic qualities of that set- 
tlement, as distinguished from other instances of co- 
lonization ; a short notice of the progress of New- 
England in the great interests of Society, during the 
century which is now elapsed ; with a few observa- 
tions on the principles upon which society and gov- 
ernment are established in this country; — comprise 
all that can be attempted, and much more than can 
be satisfactorily performed on the present occasion. 

Of the motives which influenced the first settlers 
to a voluntary exile, induced them to relinquish their 
native country, and to seek an asylum in this then 
unexplored wilderness, the first and principal, no 
doubt, were connected with Religion. They sought 
to enjoy a higher degree of Religious freedom, and 



15 

what they esteemed a purer form of Religious wor- 
ship, than was allowed to their choice, or presented 
to their imitation, in the old world. The love of 
Religious Liberty is a stronger sentiment, when fully 
excited, than an attachment to civil or political free- 
dom. That freedom which the conscience demands, 
and which men feel bound by their hopes of salva- 
tion to contend for, can hardly fail to be attained. 
Conscience, in the cause of Religion, and the wor- 
ship of the Deity, prepares the mind to act, and to 
suffer beyond almost all other causes. It sometimes 
gives an impulse so irresistible, that no fetters of 
power or of opinion can withstand it. History in- 
structs us that this love of Religious liberty, a com- 
pound sentiment in the breast of man, made up of 
the clearest sense of right, and the highest convic- 
tion of duty, is able to look the sternest despotism 
in the face, and with means apparently most inade- 
quate, to shake principalities and powers. There 
is a boldness, a spirit of daring, in religious reform- 
ers, not to be measured by the general rules which 
controul men's purposes and actions. li the hand of 
power be laid upon it, this only seems to augment 
its force and its elasticity, and to cause its action to 
be more formidable and terrible. Human invention 
has devised nothing, human power has compassed 
nothing that can forcibly restrain it, when it breaks 
forth. Nothing can stop it, but to give way to it ; 
nothing can check it, but indulgence. It loses its 
power only when it has gained its object. The 



16 

principle of toleration, to which the world has come 
so slowly, is at once the most just and the most wise 
of all principles. Even when religious feeling takes 
a character of extravagance and enthusiasm, and 
seems to threaten the order of society, and shake 
the columns of the social edifice, its principal danger 
is in its restraint. If it be allowed indulgence and 
expansion, like the elemental fires it only agitates 
and perhaps purifies the atmosphere, while its ef- 
forts to throw otr restraint would burst the world 
asunder. 

It is certain, that although many of them were 
republicans in principle, we have no evidence that 
our New-England ancestors would have emigrated, 
as they did, from their own native country, become 
wanderers in Europe, and finally undertaken the 
establishment of a colony here, merely from their 
dislike of the political systems of Europe. They 
fled not so much from the civil ofovernment, as from 
the Hierarchy, and the laws which enforced con- 
formity to the Church Establishment. Mr. Robin- 
son had left England as early as sixteen hundred and 
eight, on account of the prosecutions for non-con- 
formity, and had retired to Holland. He left Eng- 
land, from no disappointed ambition in affairs of 
state, from no regrets at the want of preferment in 
the church, nor from any motive of distinction, or of 
gain. Uniformity in matters of Religion was press- 
ed with such extreme rigour, that a voluntary exile 
seemed the most eligible mode of escaping from the 



17 

penalties of non-compliance. The accession of Eli- 
zabeth had, it is true, quenched the fires of Smith- 
field, and put an end to the easy acquisition of the 
crown of martyrdom. Her long reign had estab- 
lished the Reformation, but toleration was a virtue 
beyond her conception, and beyond the age. She 
left no example of it to her successor; and he was 
not of a character which rendered it probable that 
a sentiment either so wise or so liberal should ori- 
ginate with him. At the present period it seems 
incredible, that the learned, accomplished, unassum- 
ing, and inoffensive Robinson should neither be tol- 
erated in his own peaceable mode of worship, in his 
own country, nor suffered quietly to depart from it. 
Yet such was the fact. He left his country by 
stealth, that he might elsewhere enjoy those rights 
which ought to belong to men in all countries. The 
embarkation of the Pilgrims for Holland is deeply 
interesting from its circumstances, and also as it 
marks the character of the times; independently of 
its connexion with names now incorporated with the 
history of empire. The embarkation was intended 
to be in the night, that it might escape the notice of 
the officers of government. Great pains had been 
taken to secure boats, which should come undiscov- 
ered to the shore, and receive the fugitives ; and 
frequent disappointments had been experienced in 
this respect. At length the appointed time came, 
bringing with it unusual severity of cold and rain. 
An unfrequented and barren heath, on the shores of 
3 



18 

Lincolnshire, was the selected spot, where the feet 
of the Pilgrims were to tread, for the last time, the 
land of their fathers. 

The vessel Avhich was to receive them did not 
come until the next day, and in the mean time the 
little band was collected, and men and women and 
children and baa^gage were crowded together, in 
melancholy and distressed confusion. The sea was 
rough, and the women and children already sick, 
from their passage down the river to the place of 
embarcation. At length the wished for boat silently 
and fearfully approaches the shore, and men and 
women and children, shaking with fear and with 
cold, as many as the small vessel could bear, venture 
off on a dangerous sea. Immediately the advance of 
horses is heard from behind, armed men appear, and 
those not yet embarked are seized, and taken into 
custody. In the hurry of the moment, there had 
been no regard to the keeping together of families, 
in the first embarcation, and on account of the ap- 
pearance of the horsemen, the boat never returned 
for the residue. Those who had got away, and 
those who had not, were in equal distress. A storm, 
of great violence and long duration, arose at sea, which 
not only protracted the voyage, rendered distressing 
by the want of all those accommodations which 
the interruption of the embarcation had occasioned, 
but also forced the vessel out of her course, and 
menaced immediate shipwreck; while those on shore, 
when they were dismissed from the custody of the 



19 

officers of justice, having no longer homes or houses 
to retire to, and their friends and protectors being 
already gone, became objects of necessary charity 
as well as of deep commiseration. 

As this scene passes before us, we can hardly for- 
bear asking, whether this be a band of malefactors 
and felons flying from justice ? What are their 
crimes, that they hide themselves in darkness ! — To 
what punishment are they exposed, that to avoid it, 
men, and women, and children, thus encounter the 
surf of the North Sea, and the terrors of a night 
storm? What induces this armed pursuit, and this 
arrest of fugitives, of all ages and both sexes? — 
Truth does not allow us to answer these inquiries, in a 
manner that does credit to the wisdom or the justice 
of the times. This was not the flight of guilt, but 
of virtue. It was an humble and peaceable religion, 
flying from causeless oppression. It was conscience, 
attempting to escape from the arbitrary rule of the 
Stuarts. It was Robinson, and Brewster, leading off 
their little band from their native soil, at first to find 
shelter on the shores of the neiffhbourinof continent, 
but ultimately to come hither ; and having sur- 
mounted all difficulties, and braved a thousand dan- 
gers, to find here a place of refuge and of rest. 
Thanks be to God, that this spot was honoured as 
the asylum of religious liberty. May its standard, 
reared here, remain forever! — May it rise up as 
high as heaven, till its banner shall fan the air of 
both continents, and wave as a glorious ensign of 
peace and security to the nations ! 



20 

The peculiar character, condition, and circum- 
stances of the colonies which introduced civilization 
and an English race into New-England, afford a most 
interesting and extensive topic of discussion. On 
these much of our subsequent character and fortune 
has depended. Their influence has essentially af- 
fected our whole history, through the two centuries 
which have elapsed ; and as they have become 
intimately connected with government, laws, and 
property, as well as with our opinions on the subjects 
of religion and civil liberty, that influence is likely 
to continue to be felt through the centuries which 
shall succeed. Emigration from one region to anoth- 
er, and the emission of colonies to people countries 
more or less distant from the residence of the pa- 
rent stock, are common incidents in the history of 
mankind ; but it has not often, perhaps never hap- 
pened, that the establishment of colonies should be 
attempted, under circumstances, however beset with 
present difficulties and dangers, yet so favourable to 
ultimate success, and so conducive to magnificent re- 
sults, as those which attended the first settlements 
on this part of the continent. In other instances, 
emigration has proceeded from a less exalted pur- 
pose, in a period of less general intelligence, or 
more without plan and by accident ; or under cir- 
cumstances, physical and moral, less favourable to 
the expectation of laying a foundation for great 
public prosperity and future empire. 

A great resemblance exists, obviously, between 



21 

all the English colonies, established within the pre- 
sent limits of the United States ; but the occasion 
attracts our attention more immediately to those 
which took possession of New-England, and the pe- 
culiarities of these furnish a strong contrast with 
most other instances of colonization. 

Among the ancient nations, the Greeks, no doubt, 
sent forth from their territories the greatest number 
of colonies. So numerous indeed were they, and so 
great the extent of space over which they were 
spread, that the parent country fondly and naturally 
persuaded herself, that by means of them she had 
laid a sure foundation for the universal civilization 
of the world. These establishments, from obvious 
causes, were most numerous in places most contiguous; 
yet they were found on the coasts of France, on the 
shores of the Euxine sea, in Africa, and even, as is 
alleged, on the borders of India. These emigra- 
tions appear to have been sometimes voluntary and 
sometimes compulsory; arising from the spontaneous 
enterprise of individuals, or the order and regulation 
of government. It was a common opinion with an- 
cient writers, that they were undertaken in religious 
obedience to the commands of oracles; and it is 
probable that impressions of this sort might have 
had more or less influence ; but it is probable, also, 
that on these occasions the oracles did not speak a 
language dissonant from the views and purposes of 
the state. 

Political science among the Greeks seems never 



22 

to have extended to the comprehension of a system, 
which should be adequate to the government of a 
great nation upon principles of hberty. They were 
accustomed only to the contemplation of small re- 
publics, and were lead to consider an augmented 
pupulation as incompatible with free institutions. 
The desire of a remedy for this supposed evil, and 
the wish to establish marts for trade, led the gov- 
ernments often to undertake the establishment of 
colonies as an affair of state expediency. Coloniza- 
tion and commerce, indeed, would naturally become 
objects of interest to an ingenious and enterprising 
people, inhabiting a territory closely circumscribed 
in its limits, and in no small part mountainous and 
sterile ; while the islands of the adjacent seas, and 
the promontories and coasts of the neighbouring 
continents, by there mere proximity, strongly solicit- 
ed the excited spirit of emigration. Such was this 
proximity, in many instances, that the new settle- 
ments appeared rather to be the mere extension of 
population over contiguous territory, than the es- 
tablishment of distant colonies. In proportion as 
they were near to the parent state, they would be 
under its authority, and partake of its fortunes. 
The colony at Marseilles might perceive lightly, or 
not at all, the sway of Phocis ; while the islands in 
the Egean sea could hardly attain to independence 
of their Athenian origin. Many of these establish- 
ments took place at an early age ; and if there were 
defects in the governments of the parent states, the 



23 

colonists did not possess philosophy or experience 
sufficient to correct such evils in their own institu- 
tions, even if they had not been, by other causes, 
deprived of the power. An immediate necessity, 
connected with the support of life, was the main 
and direct inducement to these undertakings, and 
there could hardly exist more than the hope of a 
successful imitation of institutions with which they 
were already acquainted, and of holding an equality 
with their neighbours in the course of improvement. 
The laws and customs, both political and municipal, 
as well as the religious worship of the parent city, 
were transferred to the colony ; and the parent city 
herself, with all such of her colonies as were not too 
far remote for frequent intercourse and common 
sentiments, would appear like a family of cities, 
more or less dependent, and more or less connected. 
We know how imperfect this system was, as a sys- 
tem of general politics, and what scope it gave to 
those mutual dissentions and conflicts which proved 
so fatal to Greece. 

But it is more pertinent to our present purpose to 
observe, that nothing existed in the character of 
Grecian emigrations, or in the spirit and intelligence 
of the emigrants, likely to give a new and important 
direction to human affairs, or a new impulse to the 
human mind. Their motives were not high enough, 
their views were not sufficiently large and prospec- 
tive. They went not forth, like our ancestors, to 
erect systems of more perfect civil liberty, or to 



24 

enjoy a higher degjree of religious freedom. Above 
all, there was nothing in the religion and learning of 
the age, that could either inspire high purposes, or 
give the ability to execute them. Whatever re- 
straints on civil liberty, or whatever abuses in reli- 
gious worship, existed at the time of our fathers' 
emigration, yet, even then, all was light in the moral 
and mental world, in comparison with its condition in 
most periods of the ancient states. The settlement 
of a new continent, in an age of progressive knowl- 
edge and improvement, could not but do more than 
merely enlarge the natural boundaries of the habit- 
able world. It could not but do much more even 
than extend commerce and increase wealth among 
the human race. We see how this event has acted 
how it must have acted, and wonder only why it did 
not act sooner, in the production of moral effects on 
the state of human knowledge, the general tone of 
human sentiments, and the prospects of human hap- 
piness. It gave to civilized man not only a new 
continent to be inhabited and cultivated, and new 
seas to be explored ; but it gave him also a new 
range for his thoughts, new objects for curiosity, and 
new excitements to knowledge and improvement. 

Roman colonization resembled, far less than that 
of the Greeks, the original settlements of this coun- 
try. Power and dominion were the objects of 
Rome, even in her colonial establishments. Her 
whole exterior aspect was for centuries hostile and 
terrific. She grasped at dominion, from India to 



25 

Britain, and her measures of colonization partook of 
the character of her general system. Her pohcy 
was military, because her objects were j)ovver, 
ascendancy, and subjugation. Detachments of emi- 
grants from Rome incorporated themselves with? 
and governed, the original inhabitants of conquered 
countries. She sent citizens where she had first 
sent soldiers ; her law followed her sword. Her 
colonies were a sort of military establishment ; so 
many advanced posts in the career of her dominion. 
A governor from Rome ruled the new colony with 
absolute sway, and often with unbounded rapacity. 
In Sicily, in Gaul, in Spain, and in Asia, the power 
of Rome prevailed, not nominally only, but really 
and effectually. Those who immediately exercised 
it were Roman; the tone and tendency of its ad- 
ministration, Roman. Rome herself continued to 
be the heart and centre of the great system which 
she had established. Extortion and rapacity, find- 
ing a wide and often rich field of action in the pro- 
vinces, looked nevertheless to the banks of the 
Tiber, as the scene in which their ill-gotten treas- 
ures should be displayed ; or if a spirit of more 
honest acquisition prevailed, the object, neverthe- 
less, was ultimate enjoyment in Rome itself. If our 
own history, and our own times did not sufficiently 
expose the inherent and incurable evils of provincial 
government, we might see them pourtrayed, to our 
amazement, in the desolated and ruined provinces of 
the Roman empire. We might hear them, in a 
4 



26 

voice that terrifies us, in those strains of complaint 
and accusation, which the advocates of the provin- 
ces poured forth in the Roman Forum. — " Qiias res 
luxuries m Jlagitiis, crudelitas in suppliciis, avaritia in 
rapinis, superbia in contumeliis, ejicere potinsset^ eas 
omneis sese pertulisse.''^ 

As was to be expected, the Roman provinces par- 
took of the fortunes as well as of the sentiments and 
general character of the seat of empire. They lived 
together with her, they flourished with her, and fell 
with her. The branches were lopped away even be- 
fore the vast and venerable trunk itself fell prostrate 
to the earth. Nothing had proceeded from her, 
which could support itself, and bear up the name of 
its origin, when her own sustaining arm should be en- 
feebled or withdrawn. It was not given to Rome 
to see, either at her zenith, or in her decline, a child 
of her own, distant indeed, and independent of her 
controul, yet speaking her language and inheriting 
her blood, springing forward to a competition with 
her own power, and a comparison with her own 
great renown. She saw not a vast region of the 
earth, peopled from her stock, full of states and 
political communities, improving upon the models of 
her institutions, and breathing in fuller measure the 
spirit which she had breathed in the best periods of 
her existence; enjoying and extending her arts and 
her literature ; rising rapidly from political child- 
hood to manly strength and independence ; her off- 
fipring, yet now her equal; unconnected with the 



27 

causes which might affect the duration of her own 
power and greatness ; of common origin, but not 
linked to a common fate ; giving ample pledge, that 
her name should not be forgotten, that her language 
should not cease to be used among men ; that what- 
soever she had done for human knowledge and 
human happiness, should be treasured up and pre- 
served ; that the record of her existence, and her 
achievements, should not be obscured, although, in 
the inscrutable purposes of Providence, it might be 
her destiny to fall from opulence and splendour ; 
although the time might come, when darkness should 
settle on all her hills ; when foreign or domestic 
violence should overturn her altars and her temples; 
when ignorance and despotism should fill the places 
where Laws, and Arts, and Liberty had flourished ; 
when the feet of barbarism should trample on the 
tombs of her consuls, and the walls of her senate 
house and forum echo only to the voice of savage 
triumph. She saw not this glorious vision, to inspire 
and fortify her against the possible decay or down- 
fal of her power. Happy are they, who in our day 
may behold it, if they shall contemplate it with the 
sentiments which it ought to inspire ! 

The New-England colonies differ quite as widely 
from the Asiatic establishments of the modern Eu- 
ropean Nations, as from the models of the Ancient 
States. The sole object of those establishments 
was originally trade ; although we have seen, in one 
of them, the anomaly of a mere trading company 



attaining a political character, disbursing revenues, 
and maintaining armies and fortresses, until it has 
extended its control over seventy millions ol' people. 
Differing from these and still differing more from 
the New-England and Norih American Colonies, are 
the European settlements in the West India Islands. 
It is not strange, that Avhen men's minds were turn- 
ed to the settlement of America, different objects 
should be proposed by those who emigrated to the 
different regions of so vast a country. Climate, soil, 
and condition were not all equally favourable to all 
pursuits. In the West Indies, the purpose of those 
who went thither, was to engage in that species of 
agriculture, suited to the soil and climate, which 
seems to bear more resemblance to commerce, than 
to the hard and plain tillage of New-England. The 
great staples of these countries, being partly an 
agricultural and partly a manufactured product, and 
not being of the necessaries of life, become the ob- 
ject of calculation, with respect to a profitable in- 
vestment of capital, like any other enterprise of 
trade or manufacture ; and more especially, as they 
require, by necessity or habit, slave labour for their 
production, the capital necessary to carry on the 
work of this production is more considerable. The 
West Indies are resorted to, therefore, rather for 
the investment of capital, than for the purpose of 
sustaining life by personal labour. Such as possess 
a considerable amount of capital, or such as choose 
to adventure in commercial speculations without 



29 

capita), can alone be fitted to be emigrants to the 
islands. The agriculture oi" these regions, as before 
observed, is a sort of commerce ; and it is a species 
of employment, in which labour seems to form an 
inconsiderable inoredient in the productive causes ; 
since the portion of white labour is exceedingly small, 
and slave labour is rather more like profit on stock, 
or capital, than labour properly so called. The in- 
dividual who contemplates an establishment of this 
kind, takes into the accoufit the cust of the necessa- 
ry number of slaves, in the same manner as he cal- 
culates the cost of the land. The uncertainty, too, 
of this species of employment, affords another ground 
of resemblance to commerce. Although gainful, on 
the whole, and in a series of years, it is often very 
disastrous for a single year, and as the capital is not 
readily invested in other pursuits, bad crops, or bad 
markets, not only affect the profits, but the capital 
itself. Hence the sudden depressions which take 
place in the value of such estates. 

But the great and leading observation, relative to 
these establishments, remains to be made. It is, that 
the owners of the soil and of the capital seldom con- 
sider themselves at home in the colony. A very great 
portion of the soil itself is usually owned in the mo- 
ther country ; a still greater is mortgaged for capital 
obtained there ; and, in general, those who are to 
derive an interest from the products, look to the 
parent country as the place for enjoyment of their 
wealth. The population is therefore constantly flue- 



30 

tuating. Nobody conies but to return. A constant 
succession of owners, agents, and factors takes place. 
Whatsoever the soil, forced by the unmitigated toil 
of slavery, can yield, is borne home to defray rents, 
and interest, and agencies ; or to give the means of 
living in a better society. In such a state, it is evi- 
dent that no spirit of permanent improvement is 
likely to spring up. Profits will not be invested with 
a distant view of benefiting posterity. Roads and 
canals will hardly be built ; schools Avill not be 
founded ; colleges will not be endowed. There will 
be few fixtures in society ; no principles of utility or 
of elegance, planted now, with the hope of being 
developed and expanded hereafter. Profit, imme- 
diate profit, must be the principal active spring in 
the social system. There may be many particular 
exceptions to these general remarks, but the outline 
of the whole, is such as is here drawn. 

Another most important consequence of such a 
state of things is, that no idea of independence of 
the parent country is likely to arise ; unless indeed 
it should spring up in a form, that would threaten 
universal desolation. The inhabitants have no strong 
attachment to the place which they inhabit. The 
hope of a great portion of them is to leave it ; and 
their great desire, to leave it soon. However useful 
tbey may be to the parent state, how much soever 
they may add to the conveniences and luxuries of 
life, these colonies are not favoured spots for the 
expansion of the human mind, for the progress of 



31 

permanent improvement, or for sowing the seeds of 
future independent empire. 

Different, indeed, most widely different, from all 
these instances of emigration and plantation, were 
the condition, the purposes, and the prospects of our 
Fathers, when they established their infant colony 
upon this spot. They came hither to a land from 
which they were never to return. Hither they had 
brought, and here they were to fix, their hopes, 
their attachments, and their objects. Some natural 
tears they shed, as they left the pleasant abodes of 
their fathers, and some emotions they suppressed, 
when the white cliffs of their native country, now 
seen for the last time, grew dim to their sight. 
They were acting however upon a resolution not to be 
changed. With whatever stifled regrets, with what- 
ever occasional hesitation, with whatever appalling 
apprehensions, which might sometimes arise with 
force to shake the firmest purpose, they had yet com- 
mitted themselves to heaven and the elements ; and 
a thousand leagues of water soon interposed to sepa- 
rate them forever from the region which gave them 
birth. A new existence awaited them here ; and 
when they saw these shores, rough, cold, barbarous, 
and barren as then they were, they beheld their 
country. That mixed and strono- feelinof, which we 
call love of country, and which is, in general, never 
extinguished in the heart of man, grasped and em- 
braced its proper object here. Whatever consti- 
tutes country, except the earth and the sun, all the 



moral causes of afTectlon and attachment, which 
operate upon the heart, thej had brought with them 
to their new abode. Here were now their families 
and friends ; their homes, and their property. 
Before they reached the shore, they had estabhshed 
the elements of a social system, and at a much ear- 
lier period had settled their forms of religious wor- 
ship. At the moment of their lauding, therefore, 
they possessed institutions of government, and insti- 
tutions of religion : and friends and families, and so- 
cial and religious institutions, established by consent, 
founded on choice and preference, iiow nearly do 
these fill up our whole idea of country ! — The morn- 
ing that beamed on the first night of their repose, 
saw the Pilgrims already established in their coun- 
try. There were political institutions, and civil li- 
berty, and religious worship. Poetry has fancied 
nothing, in the wanderings of heroes, so distinct and 
characteristic. Here was man, indeed, unprotected, 
and unprovided for, on the shore of a rude and fear- 
ful wilderness ; but it was politic, intelligent and 
educated man. Every thing was civilized but the 
phvsical world. Institutions containing in substance 
all that ages had done for human government, were 
established in a forest. Cultivated mind was to act 
on uncultivated nature ; and, more than all, a go- 
vernment, and a country, were to commence with 
the very first foundations laid under the divine light 
of the christian religion. Happy auspices of a happy 
futuritv ! Who would wish, that his country's exis- 



33 

tence had otherwise begun ? — Who would desire the 
power of going back to the ages ot" table? Who 
would wish for an origin, obscured in the darkness 
of antiquity ? — Who Would wish for other embla- 
zoning of his country's heraldry, or other ornaments 
of her genealogy, than to be able to say, that her 
first existence was with intelligence ; her first breath 
the inspirations of liberty; her fust principle the 
truth of divine religion? 

Local attachments and sympathies would erelong 
spring up in the breasts of our ancestors, endearing 
to them the place of their refuge. Whatever natu- 
ral objects are associated with interesting scenes and 
high efforts, obtain a hold on human feeling, and de- 
mand from the heart a sort of recognition and re- 
gard. This Rock soon became hallowed in the 
esteem of the Pilgrims, and these hills grateful to 
their sight. Neither they nor their children were 
again to till the soil of England, nor again to tra- 
verse the seas which surrounded her. But here 
was a new sea, now open to their enterprise, and a 
new soil, which had not failed to respond gratefully 
to their laborious industry, and which was already 
assuming a robe of verdure. Hardly had they pro- 
vided shelter for the living, ere they were summon- 
ed to erect sepulchres for the dead. The ground 
had become sacred, by enclosing the remains of 
some of their companions and connexions. A parent, 
a child, a husband or a wife, had gone the way of 
all flesh, and mingled with the dust of New-England. 



We naturally look with strong emotions to the spot, 
though it be a wilderness, where the ashes of those 
we have loved repose. Where the heart has laid 
down what it loved most, it is desirous of laying 
itself down. No sculptured marble, no enduring 
monument, no honourable inscription, no ever burn- 
ing taper that would drive away the darkness of 
death, can soften our sense of the reality of mortali- 
ty, and hallow to our feelings the ground which is to 
cover us, like the consciousness that we shall sleep, 
dust to dust, with the objects of our affections. 

In a short time other causes sprung up to bind the 
Pilgrims with new cords to their chosen land. Chil- 
dren were born, and the hopes of future generations 
arose, in the spot of their new habitation. T1k2 
second generation found this the land of their na- 
tivity, and saw that they were bound to its fortunes. 
They beheld their father's graves around them, and 
while they read the memorials of their toils and la- 
bours, they rejoiced in the inheritance which they 
found bequeathed to them. 

Under the influence of these causes, it was to be 
expected, that an interest and a feeling should arise 
here, entirely diflferent from the interest and feeling 
of mere Englishmen; and all the subsequent history 
of the colonies proves this to have actually and gra- 
dually taken place. With the general acknowledg- 
ment of the supremacy of the British crown, there 
was, from the first, a repugnance to an entire sub- 
mission to the control of British legislation. The 



35 

colonies stood upon their charters, which as they 
contended, exempted them from the ordinary power 
of the British parHament, and authorized them to 
conduct their own concerns by their own councils. 
They utterly resisted the notion that they were to 
be ruled by the mere authority of the government 
at home, and would not endure even that their own 
charter governments should be established on the 
other side of the Atlantic. It was not a controling 
or protecting board in England, but a government of 
their own, and existing immediately within their 
limits, which could satisfy their wishes. It was easy 
to foresee, what we know also to have happened, 
that the first great cause of collision and jealousy 
would be, under tlie notion of political economy 
then and still prevalent in Europe, an attempt on 
the part of the mother country to monopolize the 
trade of the colonies. Whoever has looked deeply 
into the causes which produced our revolution, has 
found, if I mistake not, the original principle far 
back in this claim, on the part of England, to mono- 
polize our trade, and a continued eflfurt on the part 
of the colonies to resist or evade that monopoly ; if 
indeed it be not still more just and philosophical to 
go farther back, and to consider it decided, (hat an 
independent government must arise here, the mo- 
ment it was ascertained that an English colonv, such 
as landed in this place, could sustain itself against 
the dangers which surrounded it, and, with other 
similar establishments, overspread the land with an 



36 

English population. Accidental causes retarded at 
times, and at times accelerated the progress of the 
controversy. The colonies wanted strength, and 
time gave it to them. They required measures of 
strong and palpable injustice on the part of the mo- 
ther country, to justify resistance ; the early part of 
the late King's reign furnished them. They needed 
spirits of high order, of great daring, of long fore- 
sight and of commanding pov>'er, to seize the favour- 
ing occasion to strike a blow, which should sever, 
forever, the tie of colonial dependence ; and these 
spirits were found, in all the extent which that or 
any crisis could demand, in Otis, Adams, Hancock, 
and the other immediate authors of our indepen- 
dence. Still it is true, that for a century, causes 
had been in operation tending to prtoare things for 
this great result. In the year 1660 -he English act 
of Navigation was passed ; the first and grand ob- 
ject of which seems to have been to secure to Eng- 
land the whole trade with her plantations. It was 
provided, by that act, that none but English ships 
should transport American produce over the ocean; 
and that the principal articles of that produce should 
be allowed to be sold only in the markets of the 
mother country. Three years afterwards another 
law was passed, which enacted, that such commodi- 
ties as the colonies might wish to purchase, should 
be bought only in the markets of the mother coun- 
try. Severe rules were prescribed to enforce the 
provisions of these laws, and heavy penalties impos- 



ed on all who should violate them. In the subse- 
quent years of the same reign, other statutes were 
passed, to reinforce these statutes, and other rules 
prescribed, to secure a compliance with these rules. 
In this manner was the trade, to and from the colo- 
nies, tied up, almost to the exclusive advantage of 
the parent country. But laws, which rendered the 
interest of a whole people subordinate to that of 
another people, were not likely to execute them- 
selves ; nor was it easy to find many on the spot, 
who could be depended upon for carrying them into 
execution. In fact, these laws were more or less 
evaded, or resisted, in all the colonies. To enforce 
them was the constant endeavour of the government 
at home ; to prevent or elude their operation, the 
perpetual object here. " The laws of navigation," 
says a living British writer, " were no where so 
openly disobeyed and contemned, as in New-Eng- 
land." " The people of Massachusetts Bay," he 
adds, " were from the first disposed to act as if in- 
dependent of the mother country, and havinsj a Go- 
vernor and magistrates of their own choice, it was 
difficult to enforce any regulation which came from 
the English parliament, adverse to their interests." 
To provide more effectually for the execution of 
these laws, we know that courts of admiralty were 
afterwards established by the crown, with power to 
try revenue causes, as questions of admiralty, upon 
the construction, given by the crown lawyers, to an 
act of parliament ; — a great departure from the 



38 

ordinary principles of English jurisprudence, but 
which has been maintained, nevertheless, by the 
force of habit and precedent, and is adopted in our 
own existing systems of government. 

" There lie," says another Ens^lish writer, whose 
connexion with the Board of Trade has enabled him 
to ascertain many facts connected with colonial his- 
tory, — •' There lie among the documents in the 
board of trade and paper office, the most satisfactory 
proofs, from the epoch of the English revolution in 
1688, throughout every reign, and during every ad- 
ministration, of the settled purpose of the colonies to 
acquire direct independence and positive sovereign- 
ty." Perhaps this may be stated somewhat too 
strongly ; but it cannot be denied, that from the 
very nature of the establishments here, and from the 
general character of the measures respecting their 
concerns, early adopted, and steadily pursued by the 
English government, a division of the empire was 
the natural and necessary result to which every thing 
tended. 

I have dwelt on tiiis topic, because it seems to me, 
that the peculiar original character of the New-En- 
gland colonies, and certain causes coeval with their 
existence, have had a strong and decided influence 
on all their subsequent history, and especially on the 
great event of the Revolution. Whoever would 
write our history, and would understand and explain 
early transactions, should comprehend the nature 
and force of the feeling which I have endeavoured 



to describe. As a son, leaving the house of his fa- 
ther for his own, finds, by the order of nature, and 
the very law of his being, nearer and dearer objects 
around which his atfections circle, while his attach- 
ment to the parental roof becomes moderated, by 
degrees, to a composed regard, and an affectionate 
remembrance; so our ancestors, leaving their native 
land, not without some violence to the feelings of 
nature and affection, yet in time found here, a new 
circle of engagements, interests, and affections ; a 
feeling, which more and more encroached upon the 
old, till an undivided sentiment, that this was their 
country, occupied the heart ; and patriotism, shutting 
out from its embraces the parent realm, became 
local to America. 

Some retrospect of the century which has now 
elapsed, is among the duties of the occasion. It 
must, however, necessarily be imperfect, to be com- 
pressed within the limits of a single discourse. I 
shall content myself, therefore, with taking notice of 
a few of the leading, and most important, occurren- 
ces, which have distinguished the period. 

When the first century closed, the progress of the 
country appeared to have been considerable ; not- 
withstanding that, in comparison with its subsequent 
advancement, it now seems otherwise. A broad and 
lasting foundation had been laid : excellent institu- 
tions had been established ; much of the prejudices 
of former times had become removed ; a more liberal 
and catholic spirit on subjects of religious concern had 



40 

begun to extend itself, and many things conspired to 
give promise of increasing future prosperity. Great 
men had arisen in public life and the liberal profes- 
sions. The Mathers, father and son, were then 
sinking low in the western horizon ; Leverett, the 
learned, the accomplished, the excellent Leveiett, 
was about to withdraw his brilliant and useful liirht. 
In Pemberton, great hopes had been suddenly ex- 
tinguished, but Prince and Colman, were in our sky; 
and the crepuscular light had begun to flash along 
the East, of a great luminary which was about to 
appear; and which was to mark the age with his 
own name, as the age of Franklin. 

The bloody Indian wars, which harassed the peo- 
ple for a part of the first century; the restrictions 
on the trade of the Colonies — added to the discour- 
agements inherently belonging to all forms of colonial 
government ; the distance from Europe, and the 
small hope of immediate profit to adventurers, are 
among the causes which had contributed to retard 
the progress of population. Perhaps it may be ad- 
ded, also, that during the period of the civil wars in 
England, and the reign of Cromwell, many persons, 
whose religious opinions and religious temper might, 
under other circumstances have induced them to 
join the New-England colonists, found reasons to re- 
main in England ; either on account of active occu- 
pation in the scenes which were passing, or of an an- 
ticipation of the enjoyment, in their own country, of 
a form of government, civil and religious, accommo- 



41 

dated to their vieAvs and principles. The violent 
measures, too, pursued against the Colonies in the 
reign of Charles the second, the mockery of a trial, 
and the forfeiture of the Charters, were serious 
evils. And during the open violences of the short 
reign of James the second, and the tyranny of An- 
dros, as the venerable historian of Connecticut ob- 
serves, " All the motives to great aclions, to industry, 
economy, enterprize, wealth, and population, were in a 
manner annihilated. A general inactivity and lan- 
guishrnent pervaded the public body. Liberty, proper- 
ty, and every thing which ought to be dear to men, every 
day grew more and more insecure.''^ 

With the revolution in England, a better prospect 
had opened on this country, as well as on that. The 
joy had been as great, at that event, and far more 
universal in JYew, than in Old England. A new 
Charter had been granted to Massachusetts, which, 
although it did not confirm to her inhabitants all 
their former privileges, yet relieved them from 
great evils and embarrassments, and promised fu- 
ture security. More than all, perhaps, the revolu- 
tion in England, had done good to the general cause 
of liberty and justice. A blow had been struck, in 
favour of the rights and liberties, not of England 
alone, but of descendants and kinsmen of England, 
all over the world. Great political truths had been 
established. The champions of liberty had been 
successful in a fearful and perilous conflict. Somers, 
and Cavendish, and JekyI, and Howard, had tri- 
6 



42 

umphed in one of the most noble causes ever un- 
dertaken bj men. A revolution had been made 
upon principle. A monarch had been dethroned, 
for violating the original compact between King and 
People. The rights of the people to partake in 
the government, and to limit the monarch by fun- 
damental rules of government, had been maintained; 
and however unjust the government of England 
might afterwards be, towards other governments or 
towards her colonies, she had ceased to be governed 
herself, by the arbitrary maxims of the Stuarts. 

New-Eno^land had submitted to the violence of 
James the second, not longer than Old England. 
Not only was it reserved to Massachusetts, that on 
her soil should be acted the first scene of that great 
revolutionary Drama, which was to take place near 
a century afterwards, but the English revolution 
itself, as far as the Colonies were concerned, com- 
menced in Boston. A direct and forcible resistance 
to the authority of James the second, was the seiz- 
ure and imprisonment of Andros, in April 1689. 
The pulse of Liberty beat as high in the extremi- 
ties, as at the heart. The vigorous feeling of the 
Colony burst out, before it was known how the 
parent country would finally conduct itself. The 
King's representative, Sir Edmund Andros, was a 
prisoner in the Castle at Boston, before it was or 
could be known, that the King himself had ceased 
to exercise his full dominion on the English throne. 

Before it was known here, whether the invasion 



43 

of the Prince of Orange would or could prove suc- 
cessful ; as soon only as it was known that it had 
been undertaken, the people of Massachusetts, at 
the imminent hazard of their lives and fortunes, had 
acconiphshed the revolution as far as respected 
themselves. It is probable, that, reasoning on gen- 
eral principles, and the known attachment of the 
English people to their constitution and liberties, and 
their deep and fixed dislike of the King's religion 
and politics, the people of New-England expected a 
catastrophe fatal to the power of the reigning 
Prince. Yet, it was not either certain enough, or 
near enough to come to their aid against the autho- 
rity of the crown, in that crisis which had arrived, 
and in which they trusted to put themselves, relying 
on God, and on their own courage. There were 
spirits in Massachusetts, congenial with the spirits of 
the distinguished friends of the revolution in Eng- 
land. There were those, who were fit to associate 
with the boldest asserters of civil liberty ; and Ma- 
ther himself, then in England, was not unworthy to 
be ranked with those sons of the church, whose 
firmness and spirit, in resisting kingly encroachment 
in religion, entitled them to the gratitude of their 
own and succeeding ages. 

The Second Century opened upon New-England 
under circumstances, which evinced, that much had 
already been accomplished, and that still better 
prospects, and brighter hopes, were before her. 
She had laid, deep and strong, the foundations of 



44 

her society. Her relloflous principles were firm, and 
her moral habits exemplary. Her public schools 
had begun to diffuse widely the elements of knowl- 
edge ; and the College, under the excellent and ac- 
ceptable administration of Leverett, had been raised 
to a high degree of credit and usefulness. 

The commercial character of the country, not- 
withstanding all discouragements, had begun to dis- 
play itself, and five hundred vessels, then belonging 
to Massachusetts, placed her in relation to com- 
ijnerce, thus early, at the head of the colonies. An 
author who wrote very near the close of the first 
century says ; " New-England is almost deserving 
that noble name ; so mightily hath it increased ; and 
from a small settlement, at first, is now become a 
very populous and fiourishing government. The cap- 
ital city, Boston, is a place of great wealth and 
trade ; and by much the largest of any in the Eng- 
lish empire of America; and not exceeded but by 
few cities, perhaps two or three, in all the Ameri- 
can world." 

But, if our ancestors at the close of the first cen- 
tury, could look back with joy, and even admiration, 
at the progress of the country ; what emotions must 
we not feel, when, from the point in which we 
stand, we also look back and run along the events 
of the century which has now closed ? The coun- 
try, which then, as we have seen, was thought 
deserving of a " noble name ;" which then had 
*' mightily increased," and become "very populous;" 



45 

what was it, in comparison with what our eyes behold 
it ? At that period, a very great proportion of its 
inhabitants lived in the Eastern section of Massa- 
chusetts proper, and in this colony. In Connecticut, 
there were towns along the coast, some of them 
respectable, but in the interiour, all was a wilderness 
beyond Hartford. On Connecticut river, settlements 
had proceeded as far up as Deerfield, and fort Dum- 
mer had been built, near where is now the South line 
of New-Hampshire. In New-Hampshire, no settle- 
ment was then begun thirty miles from the mouth of 
Piscataqua river, and, in what is now Maine, the inha- 
bitants were confined to the coast. The aggregate of 
the whole population of New-England did not exceed 
one hundred and sixty thousand. Its present amount 
is probably one million seven hundred thousand. 
Instead of being confined to its former limits, her 
population has rolled backward and filled up the 
spaces included within her actual local boundaries. 
Not this only, but it has overflowed those bounda- 
ries, and the waves of emigration have pressed, far- 
ther and farther, toward the Avest. The Alleghany 
has not checked it ; the banks of the Ohio have 
been covered with it. New-England farms, houses, 
villages, and churches spread over, and adorn the 
immense extent from the Ohio to Lake Erie ; and 
stretch along, from the Alleghany, onwards beyond 
the Miamies, and towards the Falls of St. Anthony. 
Two thousand miles westward from the rock where 
their fathers landed, may now be found the sons of 



46 

the Pilgrims; cultivating smiling fields, rearing towns 
and villages, and cherishing, we trust, the patrimo- 
nial blessings of wise institutions, of liberty, and reli- 
gion. The world has seen nothing like this. Re- 
gions large enough to be empires, and which, half a 
century ago, were known only as remote and unex- 
plored wildernesses, are now teeming with popula- 
tion, and prosperous in all the great concerns of life ; 
in good governments, the means of subsistence, and 
social happiness. It may be safely asserted, that 
there are now more than a million of people, de- 
scendants of New-England ancestry, living free and 
happy, in regions, which hardly sixty years ago, were 
tracts of unpenetrated forest. Nor do rivers, or 
mountains, or seas resist the progress of industry and 
enterprise. Ere long, the sons of the Pilgrims will 
be on the shores of the Pacific. The imagination 
hardly keeps up with the progress of population, 
improvement, and civilization. 

It is now five and forty years, since the growth 
and rising glory of America were portrayed, in the 
English parliament, with inimitable beauty, by the 
most consummate orator of modern times. Going 
back somewhat more than half a century, and de- 
scribinoj our progress, as foreseen, from that point, 
by his amiable friend Lord Bathurst, then living, he 
spoke of the wonderful progress which America had 
made, during the period of a single human life. 
There is no American heart, I imagine, that does not 
glow, both with conscious patriotic pride, and admi- 



47 

ration for one of the liapplest efforts of eloquence, 
so often as the vision, of " that little speck, scarce 
visible in the mass of national interest, a small semi- 
nal principle, rather than a formed bodj," and the 
progress of its astonishing development and growth, 
are recalled to the recollection. But a stronger 
feeling might be produced, if we were able to take 
up this prophetic description where he left it ; and 
placing ourselves at the point of time in which he 
was speaking, to set forth with equal felicity, the 
subsequent progress of the country. There is yet 
among the living, a most distinguished and venerable 
name, a descendant of the Pilgrims ; one who has 
been attended through life by a great and fortunate 
genius; a man illustrious by his own great merits, 
and favoured of Heaven in the long continuation of 
his years. The time when the English orator was 
thus speaking of America, preceded, but by a few 
days, the actual opening of the revolutionary Drama 
at Lexington. He to whom I have alluded, then at 
the age of forty, was among the most zealous and 
able defenders of the violated rights of his country. 
He seemed already to have filled a full measure of 
public service, and attained an honourable fame. 
The moment was full of difficulty and danger, and 
big with events of immeasurable importance. The 
country was on the very brink of a civil war, of 
Avhich no man could foretel the duration or the result. 
Something more than a courageous hope, or charac- 
teristic ardour, would have been necessary to im- 



48 

press the glorious prospect on his belief, if, at that 
moment, before the sound of the first shock of ac- 
tual war had reached his ears, some attendant spirit 
had opened to him the vision of the future ; if it had 
said to him, "The blow is struck, and America is 
severed from England forever!" if it had informed 
him, that he himself, the next annual revolution of 
the sun, should put his own hand to the great In- 
strument of Independence, and write his name where 
all nations should behold it, and all time should not 
efface it ; that ere long he himself should maintain 
the interest and represent the sovereignty of his 
new-born country, in the proudest courts of Europe ; 
that he should one day exercise her supreme ma- 
gistracy ; that he should yet live to behold ten mil- 
lions of fellow citizens paying him the homage of 
their deepest gratitude and kindest affections ; that 
he should see distinguished talent and high public 
trust resting where his name rested ; that he should 
even see with his own unclouded eyes, the close of 
the second century of New England ; he who had 
begun life almost with its commencement, and lived 
through nearly half the whole history of his country; 
and that on the morning of this auspicious day, he 
should be found in the political councils of his native 
state, revising, by the light of experience, that sys- 
tem of government, which forty years before he 
had assisted to frame and establish ; and great and 
happy as he should then behold his country, there 
should be nothing in prospect to cloud the scene, 



49 

nothing to check the ardour of that confident and 
patriotic hope, which should glow in his bosom to 
the end of his long protracted and happy life. 

It would far exceed the limits of this discourse, 
even to mention the principal events in the civil and 
political history of New-England during the century ; 
the more so, as for the last half of the period, that 
history has been, most happily, closely interwoven 
with the general history of the United States. New- 
England bore an honourable part in the wars which 
took place between England and France. The cap- 
ture of Louisbourg gave her a character for mili- 
tary achievement ; and in the war which terminated 
with the peace of 1763, her exertions on the fron- 
tiers were of most essential service as well to the 
mother country as to all the colonies. 

In New-England the war of the revolution com- 
menced. I address those who remember the memo- 
rable 19th of April 1775; who shortly after saw 
the burning spires of Charlestown ; who beheld the 
deeds of Prescott, and heard the voice of Putnam 
amidst the storm of war, and saw the generous 
Warren fall, the first distinguished victim in the 
cause of liberty. It would be superfluous to say, 
that no portion of the country did more than the 
states of New-England, to bring the revolutionary 
struggle to a successful issue. It is scarcely less to 
her credit, that she saw early the necessity of a 
closer union of the states, and gave an efficient and 
7 



50 

ludispensible aid to the establishment and organiza- 
tion of the federal government. 

Perhaps we might safely say, thai a new spirit^ 
and a new excitement began to exist here, about the 
middle of the last century. To whatever causes it 
may be imputed, there seems then to have com- 
menced a more rapid improvement. The colonies 
had attracted more of the attention of the mother 
country, and some renown in arms had been acquir- 
ed. Lord Chatham was the first English minister 
who attached high importance to these possessions 
of the crown, and who foresaw anything of their fu- 
ture growth and extension. His opinion was, that 
the great rival of England was chiefly to be feared 
as a maritime and commercial power, and to drive 
her out of North America and deprive her of her 
West India possessions, was a leading object in his 
policy. He dwelt often on the fisheries as nurseries 
for British seamen, and the colonial trade as furnish- 
ing them employment. The war, conducted by him 
with so much vigour, terminated in a peace, by which 
Canada was ceded to England* The etTect of this 
was immediately visible in the New-England colo- 
nies : for the fear of Indian hostilities on the fron- 
tiers being now happily removed, settlements went 
on with an activity before that time altogether un- 
precedented, and public affairs wore a new and en- 
couraging aspect. Shortly after this fortunate ter- 
mination of the French war, the interesting topics 
connected with the taxation of America by the Bri- 



SI 

fish Parliament began to be discussed, and the at- 
tention of all the faculties of the people drawn to- 
wards them. There is perhaps no portion of our 
history more full of interest than the period from 
1760 to the actual commencement of the war. The 
progress of opinion, in this period, though less known, 
is not less important, than the progress of arras after- 
wards. Nothing deserves more consideration than 
those events and discussions which affected the pub- 
lic sentiment, and settled the Revolution in men's 
minds, before hostilities openly broke out. 

Internal improvement followed the establishment, 
and prosperous commencement, of the present go- 
vernment. More has been done for roads, canals, 
and other public works, within the last thirty years, 
than in all our former history. In the first of these 
particulars, few countries excel the New-England 
States. The astonishing increase of their naviga- 
tion and trade is known to every one, and now belongs 
to the history of our national wealth. 

We may flatter ourselves, too, that literature and 
taste have not been stationary, and that some ad- 
vancement has been made in the elegant, as well as 
in the useful arts. 

The nature and constitution of society and govern- 
ment in this country, are interesting topics, to which 
1 would devote what remains of the time allowed to 
this occasion. Of our system of government, the 
first thing to be said, is, that it is really and practi- 
cally a free system. It originates entirely with the 



52 

people, and rests on no other foundation than their 
assent. To judge of its actual operation, it is not 
enough to look merely at the form of its construction. 
The practical character of government depends 
often on a variety of considerations, besides the ab- 
stract frame of its constitutional organization. Among 
these, are the condition and tenure of property ; the 
laws regulating its ahenation and descent ; the pre- 
sence or absence of a military power ; an armed or 
unarmed yeomanry ; the spirit of the age, and the 
degree of general intelligence. In these respects it 
cannot be denied, that the circumstances of this 
country are most favourable to the hope of main- 
taining the government of a great nation on princi- 
ples entirely popular. In the absence of military 
power, the nature of government must essentially 
depend on the manner in which property is holden 
and distributed. There is a natural influence belong- 
ing to property, whether it exists in many hands or 
few; and it is on the rights of property, that both 
despotism and unrestrained popular violence ordina- 
rily commence their attacks. Our ancestors began 
their system of government here, under a condition 
of comparative equality in regard to wealth, and 
their early laws were of a nature to favour and con- 
tinue this equality.* A republican form of govern- 

* The contents of several of the following pages will be found also in the 
printed account of the proceedings of the Massachusetts convention, in some 
remarks made by the author a few days before the delivery of this discourse. 
As those remarks were originally written for this discourse, it was thought 
proper not to omit them, in the publication, notwithstanding this circumstance. 



53 

inent rests, not more on political Constitutions, than 
on those laws which regulate the descent and 
transmission of property. — Governments like ours 
could not have been maintained, where property 
was holden according to the principles of the feu- 
dal system; nor, on the other hand, could the feu- 
dal Constitution possibly exist with us. Our New 
England ancestors brought hither no great capitals 
from Europe; and if they had, there was nothing 
productive, in which they could have been invested. 
They left behind them the whole feudal policy of 
the other continent. They broke away, at once, 
from the system of military service, established in 
the dark ages, and which continues, down even to 
the present time, more or less to affect the condi- 
tion of property all over Europe. They came to a 
new country. There were, as yet, no lands yield- 
ing rent, and no tenants rendering service. The 
whole soil was unreclaimed from barbarism. They 
were themselves, either from their original condi- 
tion, or from the necessity of their common interest, 
nearly on a general level, in respect to property. 
Their situation demanded a parcelling out and di- 
vision of the lands ; and it may be fairly said, that 
this necessary act fixed the future frame and form 
of their government. The character of their politi- 
cal institutions was determined by the fundamental 
laws respecting property. The laws rendered es- 
tates divisible among sons and daughters. The right 
of primogeniture, at first limited and curtailed, was 



6i 

afterwards abolished. The property was all free- 
hold. The entailment of estates, long trusts, and the 
other processes for fettering and tying up inheritan- 
ces, were not applicable to the condition of society, 
and seldom made use of. On the contrary, aliena- 
tion of the land was every way facilitated, even to 
the subjecting of it to every species of debt. The 
establishment of public registries, and the simplicity 
of our forms of conveyance, have greatly facilitated 
the change of real estate, from one proprietor to 
another. The consequence of all these causes has 
been, a great subdivision of the soil, and a great 
equality of condition ; the true basis most certainly 
of a popular government. — ^" If the people," says 
Harrington, " hold three parts in four of the terri- 
tory, it is plain there can neither be any single per- 
son nor nobility able to dispute the government with 
them ; in this case therefore, except Jorce be interpos- 
ed, they govern themselves." 

The history of other nations may teach us how 
favourable to public liberty is the division of the 
soil into small freeholds, and a system of laws, of 
which the tendency is, without violence or injustice, 
to produce and to preserve a degree of equality of 
property. It has been estimated, if I qjistake not, 
that about the time of Henry the VII., four fifths 
of the land in England, was holden by the great 
barons and ecclesiastics. The effects of a growing 
commerce soon afterwards beo^an to break in on this 
state of things, and before the revolution in 1688 a 



55 

vast change had been wrought. It may be thought 
probable, that, for the last half century, the process 
of subdivision in England, has been retarded, if not 
reversed ; that the great weight of taxation has 
compelled many of the lesser freeholders to dispose 
of their estates, and to seek employment in the 
array and navy ; in the professions of civil life ; in 
commerce or in the colonies. The effect of this on 
the British Constitution cannot but be most unfa- 
vourable. A few large estates grow larger ; but 
the number of those who have no estates also in- 
creases ; and there may be danger, lest the inequal- 
ity of property become so great, that those who 
possess it may be dispossessed by force ; in other 
words that the government may be overturned. 

A most interesting experiment of the effect of a 
subdivision of property on government, is now mak- 
ing in France. It is understood, that the law regu- 
lating the transmission of property, in that country, 
now divides it, real and personal, among all the chil- 
dren, equally, both sons and daughters ; and that 
there is, also, a very great restraint on the power of 
making dispositions of property by will. It has 
been supposed, that the effects of this might proba- 
bly be, in time, to break up the soil into such small 
subdivisions, that the proprietors would be too 'poor 
to resist the encroachments of executive power. I 
think far otherwise. What is lost in individual 
wealth, will be more than gained, in numbers, in in- 
telligence, and in a sympathy of sentiment. Tf in-' 



56 

deed, only one, or a few landholders were to resist 
the crown, like the barons of England, they must, 
of course, be great and powerful landholders with 
multitudes of retainers, to promise success. But if 
the proprietors of a given extent of territory are 
summoned to resistance, there is no reason to believe 
that such resistance would be less forcible, or less 
successful, because the number of such proprietors 
should be great. Each would perceive his own im- 
portance, and his own interest, and would feel that 
natural elevation of character which the conscious- 
ness of property inspires. A common sentiment would 
unite all, and numbers would not only add strength, 
but excite enthusiasm. It is true, that France 
possesses a vast military force, under the direction 
of an hereditary executive government; and military 
power, it is possible, may overthrow any government. 
It is, in vain, however, in this period of the world, to 
look for security against military power, to the arm of 
the great landholders. That notion is derived from 
a state of things long since past ; a state in which a 
feudal baron, with his retainers, might stand against 
the sovereign, who was himself but the greatest 
baron, and his retainers. But at present, what could 
the richest landholder do, against one regiment of dis- 
ciplined troops? Other securities, therefore, against 
the prevalence of military power must be provided. 
Happily for us, we are not so situated as that any 
purpose of national defence requires, ordinarily and 
constantly, such a military force as might seriously 
endanger our liberties. 



57 

In respect, however, to the recent law of succes- 
sion in France, to which I have alluded, I would, 
presumptuously perhaps, hazard a conjecture, that 
if the government do not change the law, the law, 
in half a century, will change the government; and 
that this change will be not in favour of the power 
of the crown, as some European writers have sup- 
posed; but against it. Those writers only reason 
upon what they think correct general principles, in 
relation to this subject. They acknowledge a want 
of experience. Here we have had that experience; 
and we know that a multitude of small proprietors, 
acting with intelligence, and that enthusiasm which 
a common cause inspires, constitute not only a formi- 
dable, but an invincible power. 

The true principle of a free and popular govern- 
ment would seem to be, so to construct it, as to give 
to all, or at least to a very great majority, an inter- 
est in its preservation : to found it, as other things 
are founded, on men's interest. The stability of 
government requires that those who desire its con- 
tinuance should be more powerful than those who 
desire its dissolution. This power, of course, is not 
always to be measured by mere numbers. — Educa- 
tion, wealth, talents, are all parts and elements of 
the general aggregate of power; but numbers, never- 
theless, constitute ordinarily the most important con- 
sideration, unless indeed there be a military force, in 
the hands of the few, by which they can controul the 
many. In this country we have actually existing 
8 



58 

systems of government, in the maintenance of which, 
it should seem, a great majority, both in numbers 
and in other means of power and influence, must see 
their interest. But this state of things is not brought 
about solely by written political constitutions, or the 
mere manner of organizing the government: but also 
by the laws which regulate the descent and trans- 
mission of property. The freest government, if it 
could exist, would not be long acceptable, if the 
tendency of the laws were to create a rapid accu- 
mulation of property in few hands, and to render 
the great mass of the population dependent and 
pcnnyless. In such a case, the popular power would 
be likely to break in upon the rights of property, or 
else the influence of property to limit and controul 
the exercise of popular power. — Universal suflrage, 
for example, could not long exist in a community, 
where there was great inequality of property. The 
holders of estates would be obliged in such case, 
either, in some way, to restrain the right of suffrage ; 
or else such right of suflrage would, long before, di- 
vide the property. In the nature of things, those 
who have not property, and see their neighbours 
possess much more than they think them to need, 
cannot be favourable to laws made for the protec- 
tion of property. When this class becomes numer- 
ous, it o-rows clamorous. It looks on property as its 
prey and plunder, and is naturally ready, at all 
times, for violence and revolution. 

It would seem, then, to be the part of political 



59 

wisdom, to found government on property ; and to 
establish such distribution of property, by the laws 
which regulate its transmission and alienation, as to 
interest the great majority of society in the support 
of the government. This is, I imagine, the true 
theory and the actual practice of our republican in- 
stitutions. With property divided, as we have it, 
no other government than that of a republic could 
be maintained, even were we foolish enough to desire 
it. There is reason, therefore, to expect a long con- 
tinuance of our systems. Party and passion, doubtless, 
may prevail at times, and much temporary mischief 
be done. Even modes and forms may be changed, 
and perhaps for the worse. But a great revolution, 
in regard to property, must take place, before our 
governments can be moved from their republican 
basis, unless they be violently struck ofif by military 
power. The people possess the property, more 
emphatically than it could ever be said of the peo- 
ple of any other country, and they can have no in- 
terest to overturn a government which protects that 
property by equal laws. 

Let it not be supposed, that this state of things 
possesses too strong tendencies towards the produc- 
tion of a dead and uninteresting level in society. 
Such tendencies are sufficiently counteracted by the 
infinite diversities in the characters and fortunes of 
individuals. Talent, activity, industry, and enter- 
prize tend at all times to produce inequality and 
distinction ; and there is room still for the accumula- 



60 

tion of wealth, with Its great advantages, to all rea- 
sonable and useful extent. It has been often urged 
against the state of society in America, that it fur- 
nishes no class of men of fortune and leisure. This 
may be partly true, but it is not entirely so, and the 
evil, if it be one, would affect rather the progress 
of taste and literature, than the general prosperity 
of the people. But the promotion of taste and 
literature cannot be primary objects of political in- 
stitutions; and if they could, it might be doubted, 
whether, in the long course of things, as much is 
not gained by a wide diffusion of general knowledge, 
as is lost by abridging the number of those whom 
fortune and leisure enable to devote themselves ex- 
clusively to scientific and literary pursuits. How- 
ever this may be, it is to be considered that it is the 
spirit of our system to be equal, and general, and if 
there be particular disadvantages incident to this, 
they are far more than counterbalanced by the ben- 
efits which weigh against them. The important 
concerns of society are generally conducted, in all 
countries, by the men of business and practical abili- 
ty ; and even in matters of taste and literature, the 
advantasfes of mere leisure are liable to be over- 
rated. If there exist adequate means of education, 
and the love of letters be excited, that love will find 
its way to the object of its desire, through the crowd 
and pressure of the most busy society. 

Connected with this division of property, and the 
consequent participation of the great mass of people, 



61 

in Its possession and enjoyments, is the system of re- 
presentation, which is admirably accommodated to 
our condition, better understood among us, and more 
familiarly and extensively practised, in the higher 
and in the lower departments of government, than 
it has been with any other people. Great facility 
has been given to this in New-England by the early 
division of the country into townships or small dis- 
tricts, in which all concerns of local police are regu- 
lated, and in which representatives to the Legislature 
are elected. Nothing can exceed the utility of these 
little bodies. They are so many Councils, or Par- 
liaments, in which common interests are discussed, 
and useful knowledge acquired and communicated. 

The division of governments into departments,, 
and the division, again, of the legislative department 
into two chambers, are essential provisions in our 
systems. This last, although not new in itself, yet 
seems to be new in its application to governments 
wholly popular. The Grecian Republics, it is plain, 
knew nothing of it ; and in Rome, the check and 
balance of legislative power, such as it was, lay be- 
tween the People and the Senate. Indeed few 
things are more difficult than to ascertain accurately 
the true nature and construction of the Roman 
Commonwealth. The relative power of the Senate 
and the People, the Consuls and the Tribunes, ap- 
pears not to have been at all times the same, nor at 
any time accurately defined or strictly observed. Ci- 
cero, indeed, describes to us an admirable arrange- 



ment of political power, and a balance of the consti- 
tion, in that beautiful passage, in which he compares 
the democracies of Greece with the Roman Com- 
monwealth. " O morem praeclarum, disciplinamque, 
quam a majoribus accepimiis^ si quidem teneremus ! sed 
nescio quo pacto jam de manibus elabitur. JYuUam 
enim illi nostri sapientissimi et sandissimi viri vim 
concionis esse voluerunt, quae scisseret plebs, aut quae 
popidus juberet ; summota condone, distributis partibus, 
iributim, et centuriatim, descriptis ordinibus, classibus, 
cBtatibus, auditis auctoribus, re multos dies promulgata 
et cognita, juberi vetarique voluerunt. Graecorum avr 
tern totae respublicae sedentis concionis temeritate ad- 
ministrantury 

But at what time this wise system existed in this 
perfection at Rome, no proofs remain to show. Her 
constitution, originally framed for a monarchy, never 
seemed to be adjusted, in its several parts, after the 
expulsion of the kings. Liberty there was, but it 
was a disputatious, an uncertain, an ill-secured liberty. 
The patrician and plebeian orders, instead of being 
matched and joined, each in its just place and pro- 
portion, to sustain the fabric of the state, were 
rather like hostile powers, in perpetual conflict. 
With us, an attempt has been made, and so far not 
without success, to divide representation into Cham- 
bers, and by ditference of age, character, qualification 
or mode of election, to establish salutary checks, in 
governments altogether elective 



63 

Having detained you so long with these observa- 
tions, I must yet advert to another most interesting 
topic, the Free Schools. In this particular New- 
England may be allowed to claim, I think, a merit of 
a peculiar character. She early adopted and has 
constantly maintained the principle, that it is the un- 
doubted right, and the bounden duty of government, 
to provide for the instruction of all youth. That 
which is elsewhere left to chance, or to charity, we 
secure by law. For the purpose of public instruc- 
tion, we hold every man subject to taxation in pro- 
portion to his property, and we look not to the ques- 
tion, whether he himself have, or have not, children 
to be benefited by the education for which he pays. 
We regard it as a wise and liberal system of police, 
by which propert}', and life, and the peace of socie- 
ty are secured. We seek to prevent, in some mea- 
sure, the extension of the penal code, by inspiring a 
salutary and conservative principle of virtue and of 
knowledge in an early age. We hope to excite a 
feeling of respectability, and a sense of character, 
by enlarging the capacity, and increasing the sphere 
of intellectual enjoyment. By general instruction, 
we seek, as far as possible, to purify the whole moral 
atmosphere ; to keep good sentiments uppermost, and 
to turn the strong current of feeling and opinion, as 
well as the censures of the law, and the denuncia- 
tions of religion, against immorality and crime. We 
hope for a security, beyond the law, and above the 
law, in the prevalence of enlightened and well prin- 



64 

clpled moral sentiment. We hope to continue and 
prolong the time, when, in the villages and farm 
houses of New-England, there may be undisturbed 
sleep within unbarred doors. And knowing that our 
government rests directly on the public will, that we 
may preserve it, we endeavour to give a safe and 
proper direction to that public will. We do not, in- 
deed, expect all men to be philosophers or states- 
men ; but we confidently trust, and our expectation 
of the duration of our system of government rests on 
that trust, that by the diffusion of general knowledge 
and good and virtuous sentiments, the political fa- 
bric may be secure, as well against open violence 
and overthrow, as against the slow but sure under- 
mining of licentiousness. 

We know, that at the present time, an attempt is 
making in the English Parliament to provide by law 
for the education of the poor, and that a gentleman 
of distinguished character, (Mr. Brougham) has 
taken the lead, in presenting a plan to government 
for carrying that purpose into effect. And yet, al- 
though the representatives of the three kingdoms 
listened to him with astonishment as well as delight, 
we hear no principles, with which we ourselves have 
not been familiar from youth ; we see nothing in the 
plan, but an approach towards that system which has 
been established in New-England for more than a 
century and a half. It is said that in England, not 
more than one child in ffteen possesses the means of 
being taught to read and write ; in Wales, one in 



65 

twenty ; in France, until lately, when some improve- 
ment has been made, not more than one in thirty-five. 
Now, it is hardly too strong to say, that in New-En- 
gland, every child possesses such means. It would be 
difficult to find an instance to the contrary, unless 
where it should be owing to the negligence of the 
parent ; — and in truth the means are actually used 
and enjoyed by nearly every one. A youth of fif- 
teen, of either sex, who cannot both read and write, 
is very unfrequently to be found. Who can make 
this comparison, or contemplate this spectacle, with- 
out delight and a feeling of just pride ? Does any 
history shew property more beneficently applied ? 
Did any government ever subject the property of 
those who have estates, to a burden, for a purpose 
more favourable to the poor, or more useful to the 
whole community ? 

A conviction of the importance of public instruc- 
tion was one of the earliest sentiments of our ances- 
tors. No lawgiver of ancient or modern times has 
expressed more just opinions, or adopted wiser mea- 
sures, than the early records of the Colony of Ply- 
mouth show to have prevailed here. Assembled on 
this very spot, a hundred and fifty-three years ago, 
the legislature of this Colony declared ; " For as 
much as the maintenance of good literature doth 
much tend to the advancement of the weal and flour- 
ishing state of Societies and Republics, this Court 
doth therefore order, that in whatever township in 
this government, consisting of fifty families or up- 
9 



6() 

wards, any meet man shall be obtained to teach a 
grarnrnir school, such township shall allow at least 
twelve pounds, to be raised by rate, on all the inha- 
bitants." 

Having provided, that all youth should be instruct- 
ed in the elements of learning by the institution oi" 
Free Schools, our ancestors had yet another duty to 
perform. Men were to be educated for tlie profes- 
sions, and the public. For this purpose they found- 
ed the University, and with incredible zeal and per- 
severance they cherished and supported it, through 
all trials and discouragements. On the subject of 
the University, it is not possible for a son of New- 
England to think without pleasure, nor to speak 
without emotion. Nothing confers more honour on 
the state where it is established, or more utility on 
the country at large. A respectable University is 
an establishment, which must be the Avork of time. 
If pecuniary means were not wanting, no new insti- 
tution could possess character and respectability at 
once. We owe deep obligation to our ancestors^ 
who began, almost on the moment of their arrival, 
the work of building up this institution. 

Although established in a different government, 
the Colony of Plymouth manifested warm friendship 
for Harvard College. At an early period, its go- 
vernment took measures to promote a general sub- 
scription throughout all the towns in this Colony, in 
aid of its small funds. Other Colleges were subse- 
quently founded and endowed, in other places, as the 



67 

ability of the people allowed ; and we may flatter 
ourselves, that the means of education, at present 
enjoyed in New-England, are not only adequate to 
the diffusion of the elements of knowledge among 
all classes, but sufficient also for respectable attain- 
ments in literature and the sciences. 

Lastly, our ancestors have founded their system 
of government on morality and religious sentiment. 
Moral habits, they believed, cannot safely be trust- 
ed on any other foundation than religious principle, 
nor any government be secure which is not support- 
ed by moral habits. Living under the heavenly 
light of revelation, they hoped to find all the social 
dispositions, all the duties which men owe to each 
other, and to society, enforced and performed. 
Whatever makes men good christians, makes them 
good citizens. Our fathers came here to enjoy their 
religion free and unmolested; and, at the end of two 
centuries, there is nothing upon which we can pro- 
nounce more confidently, nothing of which we can 
express a more deep and earnest conviction, than of 
the inestimable importance of that religion to man, 
both in regard to this life, and that which is to come. 

If the blessings of our political and social condition 
have not now been too highly estimated, we cannot 
well over-rate the responsihiiity af)d duty which they 
impose upon us. We hold these institutions of go- 
vernment, religion, and learning, to be transmitted, 
as well as enjoyed. We are in the line of convey-^ 
ance, through which whatever has been obtained by 



68 

the spirit and efforts of our ancestors, is to be com- 
municated to our children. 

We are bound to maintain public liberty, and by 
the example of our own systems, to convince the 
Avorld, that order, and law, religion, and morality, 
the rights of conscience, the rights of persons, and 
the rights of property, may all be preserved and se- 
cured, in the most perfect manner, by a government 
entirely and purely elective. If we fail in this, our 
disaster will be signal, and will furnish an argument, 
stronger than has yet been found, in support of those 
opinions, which maintain that government can rest 
safely on nothing but power and coercion. As far 
as experience may show errors in our establishments, 
we are bound to correct them ; and if any practices 
exist, contrary to the principles of justice and hu- 
manity, within the reach of our laws or our influence, 
we are inexcusable if we do not exert ourselves to 
restrain and abolish them. 

I deem it my duty on this occasion to suggest, that 
the land is not wholly free from the contamination 
of a traffic, at which every feeling of humanity must 
forever revolt — I mean the African slave trade. 
Neither public sentiment, nor the law, has hitherto 
been able entirely to put an end to this odious and 
abominable trade. At the moment when God, in 
his mercy, has blessed the Christian world with an 
universal peace, there is reason to fear, that to the 
disgrace of the Christian name and character, new 
efforts are making for the extension of this trade, by 
subjects and citizens of Christian states, in whose 



e9 



hearts no sentiment of humanity or justice inhabits, 
and over whom neither the fear of God nor the fear 
of man exercises a controul. In the sight of our 
law, the African slave trader is a pirate and a felon; 
and in the sight of heaven, an offender far beyond 
the ordinary depth of human guilt. There is no 
brighter part of our history, than that which records 
the measures which have been adopted by the go- 
vernment, at an early day, and at different times 
since, for the suppression of this traffic; and I would 
call on all the true sons of New-England, to co-ope- 
rate with the laws of man, and the justice of heaven..^ 
If there be, within the extent of our knowledge or 
influence, any participation in this traffic, let us 
pledge ourselves here, upon the Rock of Plymouth, ^ 
to extirpate and destroy it. It is not fit, that the 
land of the Pilo^rims should bear the shame Ioniser.. 
I hear the sound of the hammer, I see the smoke 
of the furnaces where manacles and fetters are still 
forged for human limbs. I see the visages of those, 
who by stealth, and at midnight, labour in this work 
of hell, foul and dark, as may become the artificers 
of such instruments of misery and torture. Let that 
spot be purified, or let it cease to be of New-En- 
gland. Let it be purified, or let it be set aside from 
the Christian world ; let it be put out of the circle 
of human sympathies and human regards, and let 
civilized man henceforth have no communion with it. 
I would invoke those who fill the seats of justice, 
and all who minister at her altar, that they execute 
the wholesome and necessary severity of the law. I 



70 

invoke the ministers of our religion, that they pro- 
claim its denunciation of these crimes, and add its 
solemn sanctions to the authority of human laws. If 
the pulpit be silent, whenever, or wherever, there 
may be a sinner bloody with this guilt, within the 
hearing of its voice, the pulpit is false to its trust. 
I call on the fair merchant, who has reaped his har- 
vest upon the seas, that he assist in scourging from 
those seas the worst pirates which ever infested 
them. That ocean, which seems to wave with a 
gentle magnificence to waft the burdens of an hon- 
est commerce, and to roll along its treasures with a 
conscious pride; that ocean, which hardy industry 
regards, even when the winds have ruffled its sur- 
face, as a field of grateful toil ; what is it to the vic- 
tim of this oppression, when he is brought to its 
shores, and looks forth upon it, for the first time, 
from beneath chains, and bleeding with stripes ? 
What is it to him, but a wide spead prospect of suf- 
fering, anguish, and death? Nor do the skies smile 
longer, nor is the air longer fragrant to him. The 
sun is cast down from heaven. An inhuman and ac- 
cursed trafhc has cut him off in his manhood, or in 
his youth, from every enjoyment belonging to his 
being, and every blessing which his Creator intend- 
ed for him. 

The Christian communities send forth their emis- 
saries of religion and letters, who stop, here and 
there alony. the coast of the vast continent of Africa, 
and with painful and tedious efforts, make some al- 
most imperceptible progress in the communication 



7J 

of knowledge, and in the general improvement of 
the natives who arc immediately about them. Not 
thus slow and imperceptible is the transmission of 
the vices and bad passions which the subjects of 
Christian states carry to the land. The slave trade 
having touched the coast, its influence and its evils 
spread, like a pestilence, over the whole continent, 
making savage wars more savage, and more frequent, 
and adding new and fierce passions to the contests 
of barbarians. 

I pursue this topic no further ; except again to 
say, that all Christendom being now blessed with 
peace, is bound by every thing which belongs to its 
character, and to the character of the present age, 
to put a stop to this inhuman and disgraceful traffic. 

We are bound not only to maintain the general 
principles of public liberty, but to support also those 
existing forms of government, which have so well 
secured its enjoyment, and so highly promoted the 
public prosperity. It is now more than thirty years 
that these States have been united under the Fede- 
lar Constitution, and whatever fortune may await 
them hereafter, it is impossible that this period of 
their history should not be regarded as distinguish- 
ed by signal prosperity and success. They must be 
sanguine, indeed, who can hope for benefit from 
change. Whatever division of the public judgment 
may have existed in relation to particular measures 
of the government, all must agree, one should think. 
in the opinion, that in its general course it has been 
eminently productive of public happiness. Its most 



r2 



ardent friends could not well have hoped from it 
more than it has accomplished ; and those who dis- 
believed or doubted ought to feel less concern about 
predictions, which the event has not verified, than 
pleasure in the good which has been obtained. Who- 
ever shall hereafter write this part of our history, 
although he may see occasional errors or defects, 
will be able to record no great failure in the ends 
and objects of government. Still less will he be 
able to record any series of lawless and despotic acts, 
or any successful usurpation. His page will contain 
no exhibition of provinces depopulated, of civil au- 
thority habitually trampled down by military power, 
or of a community crushed by the burden of taxa- 
tion. He will speak, rather, of public liberty pro- 
tected, and public happiness advanced ; of increased 
revenue, and population augmented beyond all ex- 
ample ; of the growth of commerce, manufactures, 
and the arts ; and of that happy condition, in which 
the restraint and coercion of government are almost 
invisible and imperceptible, and its influence felt only 
in the benefits which it confers. We can entertain 
no better wish for our own country than that this 
government may be preserved; nor have we a 
clearer duty than to maintain and support it in the 
full exercise of all its just constitutional powers. 

The cause of science and literature also imposes 
upon us an important and delicate trust. The wealth 
and population of the country are now so far ad- 
vanced, as to authorize the expectation of a correct 
literature, and a well formed taste, as well as respect- 



73 

able progress in the abstruse sciences. The country 
has risen from a state of colonial dependency ; it 
has established an indc{)cndcnt government, and is 
now in the undisturbed enjoyment of peace and po- 
litical security. The elements of knowledge are 
universally diffused, and the leading portion of the 
community large. Let us hope that the present 
may be an auspicious era of literature. If, almost 
on the day of their landing, our ancestors founded 
schools and endowed colleges, what obligations do 
not rest upon us, living under circumstances so much 
more favourable both for providing and for using the 
means of education? Literature becomes free in- 
stitutions. It is the graceful ornament of civil liber- 
ty, and a happy restraint on the asperities, which 
political controversy sometimes occasions. Just taste 
is not only an embellishment of society, but it rises 
almost to the rank of the virtues, and diffuses posi- 
tive good throughout the whole extent of its influ- 
ence. There is a connexion between right feeling 
and right principles, and truth in taste is allied with 
truth in morality. With nothing in our past history 
to discourage us, and with something in our present 
condition and prospects to animate us, let us hope, 
that as it is our fortune to live in an age when we 
may behold a wonderful advancement of the country 
in all its other great interests, we may see also equal 
progress and success attend the cause of letters. 

Finally, let us not forget the religious character 
of our origin. Our fathers were brought hither by 
10 



74 

their high veneration for the Christian Religion. 
They journeyed by its light, and laboured in its 
hope. They sought to incorporate its principles 
with the elements of their society, and to diffuse its 
influence through all their institutions, civil, political, 
or literary. Let us cherish these sentiments, and 
extend this influence still more widely ; in the full 
conviction, that that is the happiest society, which 
partakes in the highest degree of the mild and 
peaceable spirit of Christianity. 

The hours of this day are rapidly flying, and this 
occasion will soon be passed. Neither we nor our 
children can expect to behold its return. They are 
in the distant regions of futurity, they exist only in 
the all-creating power of God, who shall stand here, 
a hundred years hence, to trace, through us, their de- 
scent from the Pilgrims, and to survey, as we have now 
surveyed, the progress of their country, during the 
lapse of a century. We would anticipate their concur- 
rence with us in our sentiments of deep regard for our 
common ancestors. We would anticipate and partake 
the pleasure with which they will then recount the 
steps of New-England's advancement. On the morning 
of that day, although it will not disturb us in our re- 
pose, the voice of acclamation and gratitude, com- 
mencing on the Rock of Plymouth, shall be trans- 
mitted through millions of the sons of the Pilgrims, 
till it lose itself in the murmurs of the Pacific seas. 

We w^ould leave for the consideration of those 
who shall then occupy our places, some proof that 
we hold the blessings transmitted from our fathers in 



75 

just estimation ; some proof of our attachment to 
the cause of good government, and of civil and reli- 
gious liberty; some proof of a sincere and ardent 
desire to promote every thing which may enlarge 
the understandings and improve the hearts of men. 
And when, from the long distance of an hundred 
years, they shall look back upon us, they shall know, 
at least, that we possessed affections, which running 
backward, and warming with gratitude for what our 
ancestors have done for our happiness, run forward 
also to our posterity, and meet them with cordial sal- 
utation, ere yet they liave arriy.e^,,^p fe^ifeligjSS 

Being. ^-yy,,., nr> nv/ni;.I 

Advance, then, ye future generations ! We would 
hail you, as you rise in your long succession, to fill 
the places which we now fill, and to taste the bles- 
sings of existence, where we are passing, and soon 
shall have passed, our own human duration. We 
bid you welcome to this pleasant land of the Fa- 
thers. We bid you welcome to the healthful skies, 
and the verdant fields of New-England. We greet 
your accession to the great inheritance which we 
have enjoyed. We welcome you to the blessino-s of 
good government, and religious liberty. We wel- 
come you to the treasures of science, and the de- 
lights of learning. We welcome you to the tran- 
scendant sweets of domestic life, to the happiness 
of kindred, and parents, and children. We welcome 
you to the immeasurable blessings of rational exis- 
tence, the immortal hope of Christianity, and the 
light of everlasting Truth ! 



y 



fCjjpentrijf. 



Tke following is a list of the Discoukses delivered on this jlnniversarij. 
Those marked with an asterisk have not been printed. 



1769. First publicly noticed by the Old Colony Club. 

1770. Edward Winslow, jun. Esq. of Plymouth, an Oration.* 

1771. (Lord's Day) the next day (23d) a public dinner. 

1772. Rev. Chandler Robbins, oi Plymouth, on Ps. Ixxviii. 6. 7.* 

1773. Rev. Charles Turner, Dvxbury, Zeck. iv. 10. 

1774. Rev. Gad Hitchcock, Pembroke, Gen. i. 31. 

1775. Rev. Samuel Baldwin, Hanover, Heb. xi. 8. 

1776. Rev. Sylvanus Conant, Middleborough, Exod. i. 12. 

1777. Rev. Samuel West, Dartmouth, Isai. Ixvi. 5 — 9. 

1778. Rev. Timothu Hilliard, Barnstable*- 

1779. Rev. William Shaw, Marshfield* 

1780. Rev. Jonathan Moore, Rochester, Isai. xli. 10. 11.* 

From this time the public observance of the day was suspended, till 

1794. Rev. Chandler Robbins, D.D. Plymouth, Psal. Ixxvii. 11. 
1795._1796, — 1797. Private celebration. 

179iJ. Doct. Zacheus Bartlett, Plymoulh, an Oration.* 

1799. The day was so near that appointed for the ordination of the Rev. 

Mr. Kendall, that it was not celebrated by a public disccurse. 

1800. John Davis, Esq. Boston, an Oration.* ^ 

1801. Rev. John Allyn, Duxbury, Heb. xii. 2. 

1802. John Quincy Adams, Esq. Boston, an Oration. 

1803. Rev. John T. Kirkland, D.D. Boston, Prov. xvii. 6.* 

1804. (Lord's Daj') Rev. James Kendall, of Plymouth, preached from 

Heb. xi. 13.* 

1305. Aldkn Bradford, Esq. JViscassel, Exod. xii. 14. 

1806. Rev. Abiel Holmes, D.D. Cambridge, Romans, ix. 5. 

1807. Rev. James Freeman, Boston.* 

1803. Rev. Thaddeus M. Harris, Dorchester, Ps. xliv. 1.2. 3. 

1809. Rev. Abiel Abbott, Beverly, Deut. xxxii. 11. 12. 

1810. Private celebration. 

1811. (Loiil's Day) Rev, John Elliot, D.D. Boston.* 
1812. 1813. — 1814. Private celebration. 

1S15. Rev. James Flint, Bridaeu-ater, Ps. xvi. 6. 

1816. (Lord's Day) Rev. Ezra Goodwin, Sandwich, Isai. Ix. 22.* 

1817. Rev. Horace Holley, Boston.* 

1818. Wendell Davis, Esq. an Oration.* 

1819. Francis C. Gray, Esq. Boston, an Oration.* 

1820. Hon. Daniel Webster, Boston, an Oration. 



^ 



'^^n 13 '-^'^ 



